


I shall not fail that rendezvous

by AnguaLupin



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Canonical Character Death, M/M, but it just makes the sads sadder, there is also happy, warning: sads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 11:32:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1426909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnguaLupin/pseuds/AnguaLupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I’ll admit I did not expect to spend my third day in Paris on the run from the Guard,” Bossuet said, laughing as he bent over and gasped.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“It took until your third day?” the young man he had – literally – run into asked. “You have been behaving yourself, then.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Well, I haven’t gone out of my way to fall in with bad company,” Bossuet said. He looked the young man up and down. “Until now.”</i>
</p><p>***</p><p>So my wings are at last clipped,<i> Bossuet thought, and rolled over, and coughed. He was not surprised when he coughed up red.</i><br/> </p><p>Joly and Bossuet, then and now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I shall not fail that rendezvous

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tritonvert](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tritonvert/gifts).



The gunshots were still echoing around him, and the shouts, and the screams. Joly couldn’t remember whether the blood coating his front was from bullets or bayonets, but it didn’t really matter. The shouts and screams were coming from _behind_ him, and that meant only one thing.

It also didn’t really matter.

Only one thing mattered now: finding Bossuet, or Bossuet’s body, and lying down next to him, and letting the screams fade away into blessed silence.

Joly crawled.

***

“I’ll admit I did not expect to spend my third day in Paris on the run from the Guard,” Bossuet said, laughing as he bent over and gasped.

“It took until your third day?” the young man he had – literally – run into asked. “You have been behaving yourself, then.”

“Well, I haven’t gone out of my way to fall in with bad company,” Bossuet said. He looked the young man up and down. “Until now.”

“The very worst!” the man said cheerfully, then stuck out his hand. Bossuet noted that the pamphlets that had caused so much commotion had completely disappeared. “I’m called Joly.”

Joly’s grin was infectious, and Bossuet found himself smiling back as he shook his hand. “Lègle, recently arrived from Meaux.”

“L’Aigle? How Imperial!”

“Funny story, that, when my father met the king—”

“—which king—”

“—the last one, as it happens, but it hardly matters. Anyway, when my father met the king to ask for a post office, the king thought his name dreadfully Bonapartist, until he realized it was spelled L-E-S-G-L-E-S, and so my father got his post office after all.”

“And does your father still retain his post office, at the behest of the new king?”

“My father is dead, and the post office has moved on, as has the king.”

“Are you in Paris to petition the king for its reinstatement, then? I’m afraid Charles is not much like his brother.”

“Heavens, no. I couldn’t petition Charles for a wheel of cheese, now could I? Besides, I’m not one for the solid life of civil service; unlike Charles, I am not much like my father.”

“What brings you to Paris, then?”

“Ostensibly, law.”

“And in reality?”

“Paris is as good a place to be as any, in this France, is it not?”

“Tell me, L’Aigle de Meaux,” Joly said, threading his arm through the crook of Bossuet’s elbow. “Is your Christian name by any chance Jean?”

Bossuet looked at him quizzically. “Why yes, it is,” he said. “Does it matter?”

“Perfect,” Joly said cheerfully, and started to drag him down the alleyway. “You’ll fit right in.”

***

The bullet that took Bossuet in his chest was enough to push him backward, off his precarious perch on one of the cart wheels to lie face up on the cobbles. It was not enough to kill him, not immediately, but it was enough to hurt very, very badly. Bossuet, dazed, did not bother to curse his luck; he was beyond it, if he had ever been inclined.

The sky arched above him, blue and clear.

 _So my wings are at last clipped_ , Bossuet thought, and rolled over, and coughed. He was not surprised when he coughed up red.

***

“Bossuet L’Aigle, my bald eagle!” the cry came from the open door of a fiacre, and Bossuet looked up to see Joly’s head, _sans_ hat but sporting an enormous muffler, accompanied by a frantically waving arm. “Do fly over here, my eagle, and get out of the mud. You’ll catch your death.”

Bossuet obligingly climbed aboard.

“I have great need of you this evening,” Joly said, digging around in his bag and pulling out, in no particular order, a bottle of laudanum, a pair of forceps, a jar of leeches, and a small cage containing a very fat and very disgruntled toad. “Ah ha!” He produced a wrinkled and only moderately slimy letter, embossed with a particularly fancy crest.

“My aunt has come to the city, you see,” he continued, “and she is very concerned with my well-being. She wishes to ensure that I have not ‘taken up with disreputable company’, as she put it, or rather as my mother said she put it, by which ‘disreputable company’ means anyone whose annual income is less than 500 louis a year.”

“Do you mean for me to provide you with such non-disreputable company?” Bossuet asked in surprise. “Because while I can adopt the airs and graces of my proud and noble lineage, or at least the proud and noble lineage that I claim to have when applying for credit, my trousers have not been to the laundress’s for months, and this coat is three seasons old. Also, I have no hat.”

Joly looked affronted. “I wouldn’t dream of it! Well, I wouldn’t dream of it unless there was a chance of getting some money out of it, but my aunt is notoriously parsimonious, and wouldn’t be likely to give me more than a franc or two even if I showed up with the king himself.” He paused to make the appropriate grimace of disgust. “No, I intend for you to be the most disreputable of disreputable company. I intend for you to be so disreputable that my aunt flees the city in disgust, and throws herself weeping upon my mother’s shoulder, thus engendering a flurry of stern letters from my father and, most importantly, ensuring that said father will not take it upon himself to visit the city himself later this month.” Handing the letter to Bossuet, he shoved the rest of the detritus back into the bag. The toad gave a mournful hiccup as the bag closed above his head. “My lodgings are filled with lead for bullets, you see, and quite a large number of inflammatory pamphlets.”

“I shall endeavor to be as disreputable as possible,” Bossuet said, handing the letter back to Joly and carefully wiping the slime off on his own trousers. Might as well start to play the part. “However, I might think that Grantaire—”

“—passed out in an opium den with Prouvaire—”

“—or Bahorel—”

“—needed to fetch some supplies from the stonemasons, or at least he said it was the stonemasons, very hush hush, I didn’t inquire further—”

“—or even Courfeyrac—”

“—ask him to give up his hat? I couldn’t!—”

“—Very well, then, my three-season-old coat and I shall play the part to the utmost. Does my disreputability include radical politics, or just poverty?”

“Politics are the exact thing I am trying to avoid getting back to my parents—”

“—hence why you didn’t invite Enjolras—”

“—but I don’t think we should limit ourselves to your poverty. There are non-political ways to be appropriately disreputable. Dare I say, even, libertine?”

“—Hence also why you didn’t invite Enjolras.”

“Indeed.”

“Well, I suppose I can _rise_ to the occasion.”

Joly didn’t even bother to roll his eyes.

***

When Joly found him, Bossuet was sitting with his back against one of the carts. Joly knew he wasn’t dead, though, because the blood still bubbled from his mouth.

“Bossuet,” Joly said. He couldn’t quite roll over to sit next to him, so he knelt in front of him, blood dripping onto the cobbles. “L’Aigle—”

“Joly—” Bossuet reached out and missed as Joly tumbled over sideways.

It hurt, it wouldn’t _stop hurting_ , but Bossuet fell on his side, holding himself up with one arm so he could reach Joly with the other. “Joly—” he said again, as Joly gripped his hand and smiled up at him.

***

“Need you for me to play the libertine—”

“I needn’t have you _play_ the libertine, I need you to _be_ the libertine, will you please go back to doing that with your mouth, thank you.”

“You know, this wasn’t exactly what I had expected when you asked me to be disreputable for you in front of your aunt.”

“Well, it’s exactly what _I_ expected, so just _keep going_.”

Later, when they had made it to the bed, Joly’s head pillowed on Bossuet’s shoulder, Bossuet concluded that Paris was in fact the _best_ place to be, in this France. Even if this France was not, yet, all it could be.

“Is this how you fly away on those four _l_ s, Jolllly,” Bossuet asked, soft.

Joly curled one arm around him protectively. “We’ll fly away together, I promise you,” he murmured, already dropping off into sleep.

***

Bossuet knew he was dying, because all he could see was the brilliance of Joly’s smile. Not even the trail of blood at the corner of Joly’s mouth could mar it. “Wait—” he said, or tried to, but he must not have managed it, because the brilliance of Joly’s smile was undimmed, and he had no right to ask that, in the end.

“My eagle,” Joly whispered, and the light went out of his eyes.

The shooting sounded very far away now. Bossuet’s arm no longer seemed able to hold him up, and he slipped down into the mud to lie next to Joly’s body. _Just my luck_ , he thought. _I didn’t even get to die first_. But maybe he was lucky, here at the end of everything: it didn’t hurt any more, and the sky was very, very blue. Still holding Joly’s hand, he curled his arm around him protectively. “Fly away on those four _l_ s, Joly,” Bossuet whispered, or thought he did. “We’ll fly away together…”

Darkness came.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, that is a joke about all the Amis being named Jean. Sorry.
> 
> Title from _I have a rendezvous with Death_ , by Alan Seeger.
> 
> (This fic turned out to be so sad that tumblr user [oilan](http://oilan.tumblr.com/) aggressively drew [happy bini](http://oilan.tumblr.com/post/83056650632) in retaliation. I am immensely flattered.)


End file.
